Politics

Should Chicago Rename Jackson Park for Rev. Jesse Jackson? Time Will Tell

Following the death of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. in February, the question has lingered of how best to permanently memorialize the civil rights icon in Chicago.

One proposal has been to rename a stretch of expressway in Jackson’s honor. Now comes a suggestion to turn Andrew Jackson Park — best known simply as Jackson Park — into Jesse Jackson Sr. Park.

“You won’t even have to change the signs,” said Graham Grady, who brought the request to the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners at its monthly meeting on Wednesday.

The names of the city’s parks are a reflection of Chicago’s values, culture, hopes and dreams, Grady said, and currently Jackson Park is named for former President Andrew Jackson, who owned more than 150 slaves and forced the relocation of tens of thousands of Native Americans.

“Jesse Jackson stood for civil rights, Andrew Jackson for civil wrongs,” Grady said. “Jesse Jackson marched for civil rights, Andrew Jackson marched thousands of Native Americans to their deaths on the Trail of Tears.”

With the Obama Presidential Center set to open in Jackson Park in June, the meaning behind the park’s name takes on even greater relevance, Grady argued.

“How are you going to have the OPC” — a monument to the United States’ first Black president — “in a park that is named for a slave owner?” he asked. “You know that is not right.”

While Grady’s comments met with rousing applause from meeting attendees, his recommendation is premature, at least in terms of Chicago Park District code.

Jackson doesn’t yet meet the code’s first criteria, which is that a person must be deceased for at least a year before having a park named in their honor, said Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, parks CEO and general superintendent.

“We can wait,” Grady said.

Once the required amount of time has passed, there is precedent for changing the name of a park, even one as historic as the 550-acre Jackson Park, which dates back to the late 1800s and was designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

In 2020, a group of students succeeded in a yearslong bid to have Douglas Park renamed Douglass Park.

It was an insult, the students said, to have a park in the predominantly Black community of North Lawndale named for Stephen Douglas, who profited from the labor of people enslaved on a plantation inherited by his wife.

The park now honors the abolitionist, orator and intellectual Frederick Douglass, as well as his wife, Anna-Murray Douglass, who helped her husband escape slavery, supported their family financially and set up their home as a station on the Underground Railroad.

The controversy over Douglas/Douglass Park prompted the Park District to establish a two-step process for renaming a park: First, the board of commissioners takes up the matter of stripping a park of its existing name; then in a second action, it considers a new name. There is a 45-day public comment period attached to both steps.

“Ultimately it is the board’s prerogative,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “If the majority of the board wants to advance that process, we can prepare the paperwork to bring it at a future board meeting.”

Contact Patty Wetli: [email protected] 

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